Before the discovery of antibiotics, community-acquired infections were a major threat to people's health and welfare. Such infections continue to be a major problem, however. Soon after the discovery of penicillin and widespread access to antibiotics in the 1940's, bacteria began to develop varied degrees of resistance to these drugs. While new drugs have been introduced since the discovery of penicillin, the majority of them are the result of varied combinations of substituents on one of nine molecular scaffolds (Barrett et al. (2003) Curr. Opin. Biotechnol., 14(6):621-626). Only two new classes of antibiotics have been introduced over the last thirty years, and only one of those, oxazolidinones, employs a novel anti-microbial mechanism (Norrby et al. (2005) Lancet Infect. Dis., 5(2):115-119). Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the number of microbes developing resistance is growing rapidly, and their resistance mechanisms are becoming more sophisticated (Tenover (2006) Am. J. Infect. Control, 34(5 Suppl. 1):S3-10 and S64-873). Antibiotic resistance initially was a problem associated with nosocomial infections, but occurrences of community-acquired cases are on the increase. Antibiotic resistance threatens the utility of “last resort” drugs such as vancomycin, the drug of choice for treating methicilin- and multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections (Levy and Marshall (2004) Nat. Med., 10(12 Suppl.):S122-129). Accordingly, there is urgent need for new antibiotics and therapeutic strategies for combating infections, especially those involving pathogens that are multidrug resistant.